Café Mouffe Presents: Oscar Peterson at Montreux

When I was in Toronto a few weeks ago, ms. Modigliani and I had dinner with our dear friend Lou Bourgeois. On the drive to Il Paridiso in Oakville, the CD playing on the car stereo was The Genus of Coleman Hawkins, one of my Top 10, Stranded on a Desert Island jazz records. Just listen to Hawk’s honking tenor ripping up an old chestnut like “In a Mellow Tone.” It could be the sound track for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, also released 50 years ago this month. Blow, man, blow!

Lou asked about the music. “That’s Coleman Hawkins with the Oscar Peterson Trio, Herb Ellis on guitar,” I said.

“Oscar Peterson?” Lou said. “We have the same piano tuner.” Turns out Oscar lives down the road now in Mississauga, Ontario. That put me in the mood to hear more from Oscar and send out this edition of the Mouffe to Lou.

As the program notes say, this YouTube clip features an unusual trio. Oscar Peterson is accompanied by two bassists,Ray Brown and Niels Pedersen. Their performance of “You Look Good To Me” was recorded in 1977 at the Montreux Jazz Festival.

If that only whets your appetite, check out this vintage clip of Oscar Peterson with Nat King Cole on vocals and Coleman Hawkins on tenor, swinging with “Sweet Lorraine.”

5 Responses to Café Mouffe Presents: Oscar Peterson at Montreux

I noticed in my backend stats a referring link to this post from The Wall Street Journal. Not exactly the usual company I keep, but hey, bring down the social barriers! To my surprise and delight, the link led to an article by Nat Hentoff. I thought he was a Village Voice, not WSJ, kind of guy. Working writers have to make a living however they can. WSJ appears to use a refreshable Sphere search widget to link out to related blog content. I’m pleased and proud to be connected with Nat Hentoff on jazz, however it happens.

Letting Go of Sight

I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.

Not This Pig

If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).

Media in Transition @ MiT

Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]

Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]

The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]